to all my fine feathered friends

in the early hours of the new year i was asked what it was to be a man. it was an idle question and like most questions the asker had forgotten it before he had finished asking it but for some reason it stuck with me. and as the promises of doing everything right this year turned into promises never to drink again, both equally likely to hold true, i waxed nostalgic about when i first asked myself what it was to be a man.

the problem you see is that like all to many words these days, it has been watered down into meaninglessness. it used to be that a man stood for something, now it simply means being over the age of 18 or having slept with someone and these both feel wrong to me. over the years i came to the conclusion that it was a contradictory mix of hardened cynicism and naive optimism, a quixotic attempt to take responsibility for your own life; this of course led me to the existentialist viewpoint i have today.

it's been said that Rudyard Kipling will be forgiven what he said for the manner in which he said it. even today 'the white man's burden' is a shining example of persuasiveness, but i think you should all read 'if' and ask yourself if you are a man.

[IF]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling